


Praxis

by Eternal



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gallifrey AU, Gallifreyan Mythology, Gen, Politics, Vampires, Wholock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:52:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal/pseuds/Eternal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is fitting into his role as Castellan on Gallifrey. Mycroft is merely watchful. Behind the scenes, political chaos is brewing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Praxis

'Ah, come in Castellan,' Mycroft called. 'Do take a seat.'  
  
John took a few microspans to compose himself. Behind the heavily ornate desk, probably imported in from somewhere in the regions of Mutter's Spiral, Lord Cardinal Mycroft was feeding a black bird with a long wingspan food from the food machine.  
  
'The High Council let you keeping alien wildlife in your office?' John frowned, looking at the bird. It had an elegant headcrest which it flattened whimsically as it preened.  
  
'You'll find, my dear Castellan, that the Lady President has sanctioned many things. Including alien students and the preservation of long dead alien animals. Though in the latter case it was a single exception. Contacts of mine found some illegal imports cracked down on illegal imports being smuggled into Gallifrey. Rather than having the organisms immolated or imported back to their native timeline which would have been costly, I decided to adopt Quence here instead. Tea?'  
  
'Sure.'  
  
'By the way, Castellan, I am glad that you decided to take up the role in spite of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding your predecessor's demise. How are you fitting in with the Watch?'  
  
'Fine. All the other Castellans were rather polite to me. I'm not quite sure about Cardinal Braxiatel, though. He seems polite, but I can't help but wonder if he was involved in Wynter's death. The entire incident was wrapped up in red tape.  '  
  
Cardinal Mycroft nodded sagely. 'Lord Braxiatel is a man after my own heart. Let that be your first lesson. Never trust anybody. We don't get where we are without a shrewd mind and ruthless dealings. You must decide who to trust. How much did Braxiatel offer to pay you?'  
  
John spluttered into his tea. 'I'm sorry. What?'  
  
'Well speak up Castellan.'  Mycroft looked at John gravely and it seemed for a moment that those incalculable grey eyes was sizing the other man up. 'I can't match his offer without knowing how much he offered for information on Sherlock and I.'  
  
'Firstly, I'm not interested in spying for either of you and your forsaken politicking could just... sod off. Secondly, my duty lies with Gallifrey and not either of you. Thirdly, how did you even know he offered me money?'  
  
'In answer to your questions, dear John. It's what I would have done.'  
  
'Well I didn't accept his offer and I'm not going to accept your offer.' John put his cup down on the table with a thunk. Mycroft's alert eyes jumped to the cup but immediately released their focus.  
  
'Is this about the dreams?'  
  
Back then, he'd thought of what the Time Lords had been doing was preservation. Preservation of the Spiral Politic - the natural order of Space-Time sworn never to interfere. But the whole sodding thing was just a cover-up for rampant and illegal time experiments. Planets had been destroyed, like Minyos in a test run of a Timonic Fusion device - a reality come temporal weapon used to eliminate timelines. That had been a failure, but there had been successes between both the Time Lords and the Enemy in a series of conceptual weapons. One, for example, had been used on Alexis. He'd died screaming John's name.  And those were the lucky ones. The other ones were driven insane. The weapons infected your entire makeup. One second you were fine and the next second you had an entire backstory of fear. It drove the unlucky ones insane and worse it endured even through regeneration.  
  
The only cure was ReLooming and that was the pits. The newer editions rewrote your entire timeline as well as your body, John had apparently ended up with memories of meeting a certain Sherlock he had never remembered meeting. Oh, and also he'd thought he was human and asked why the sky wasn't blue which was a sure indicator that something wasn't correct with his makeup.  
  
A mental instability the higher command called it.  
A security leak, the Council called it.  
  
Nobody could take a Gallifreyan with conflicting memories of reality, so thirteen counselling sessions and two career changes later he was landed in some higher up Timey's office taking what he was given and feeling significantly put off.  
  
'And no, it's not about the dreams and of course I can handle it. What I would like you to do, Mycroft, is to stop pretending that there wasn't ever anybody called Sherlock and that me remembering a person called Sherlock is a delusion. It might not be politically correct, but I am tired of being lied to.'  
  
'That is a matter for the President to decide,' Mycroft's voice was strained.  
  
'So there is a person called Sherlock? Why do I feel as if I am not being told the entire story?'  
  
'It is a family matter. You must understand, we prefer to keep these things confidential.  There was... a specific incident with my brother.'  
  
John was silent for a microspan. Then he started laughing humourlessly. 'I get this. He never actually existed because he was exiled as a renegade and was later offered presidency, but managed to escape before he could be held to his duties. Am I talking about the right person now?'  
  
Mycroft wasn't laughing. 'My brother was not the Doctor. As you well know,  John. The infamy of the Prydonian renegade is Lungbarrow's and Cardinal Braxiatel's legacy.'  
  
'Ok, so could I ask what happened to him?'  
  
 'He was ... turned. Our relationship, as you must understand, is strained with the lesser Vampires. Officially, the Capitol is holding no political refugees and a certain Sherlock does not even exist in the Matrix biodata records. However, there is some... truth in the rumour that one of our people was attacked in public but managed to escape to one of our embassies where the rules of extraterritoriality means that the Vampires' claim on him was invalidated. The Vampires refuse to accept our offers of extended territoriality. Some extremists, which the Vampires claim are a breakaway terrorist group unaffiliated with their interests, have gone as far as trying to sabotage the Transduction Barriers. John, we are on the brink of war.'  
  
'Haven't you tried diplomacy?'  
  
'Excuse my language, John, but we are dealing with savages here who have not acknowledged the existence diplomacy in centuries. I was about to recommend you to the Vampire and Time Lord delegations as an ambassador for our people. You'd be afforded access to our cache of weapons in the Anomaly Vaults as a precaution, of course.'  
  
'Mycroft, no. I am not going to your stupid delegation and secretly blowing up vampires. That would start a war.'  
  
'We were rather hoping that if the Vampires were seen to initiate hostilities then the Council would approve of the use of arms in justified self defense. After all, Rassilon himself sanctioned the use of weapons in self defense against the Vampires.'  
  
'Firstly, Rassilon was a horrible racist and secondly, aren't you missing something?'  
  
'Missing what exactly? John I don't have all the time in the world, ironically and my baby brother does tend to make demands on my time. Laboratories, sulking and forbidden technologies barred to Time Lords since the inception of our society. I was hoping that you'd be able to talk some sense into him.'  
  
'...Right...'  
  
'Like you could offer him your codes as a backdoor into the Matrix, for instance, it might pacify him for a while.'  
  
'You know, Mycroft, what about giving the Vampires what they want? Surely it's not so difficult if he just moved into Vampire territory.'  
  
'John, you must understand that I can't afford to lose the Chancellery guard to Sherlock's personal protection and the weapon's decontamination unit is required. Regularly.' From Mycroft's facial expression, he really did mean it.  
  
'And you can afford a war. Right.'  
  
'I wasn't the one who opened up these old enmities.' Mycroft's voice was strained. 'If you're not too keen on making yourself useful, why don't you deliver these to Sherlock?' He placed a wrapped package on the table and slid it to John.    
  
'Why can't you just do this yourself... Oh.' Inside the package was two smartly rolled up packets of Vitamin D tablets and a pint of preserved blood cloned from bone marrow tissue of some unspecified animal.  
  
'Now you know what I have to deal with daily, Castellan. Mummy insists that we do not cede Sherlock to the Vampires and if I so much as think about it, I will not rest in peace for the next decade.'  
  
'Look, I don't wish to be rude Cardinal, but I am a pretty busy with my duties at the moment.'  
  
A steely glint entered Mycroft's eye. 'It's true that Gallifrey is in need of good Castellans. But it's a rare person with decency and a strong moral compass. '  
  
'Well, I'm flattered. But I'm not sure I see the point.'  
  
'Sherlock... is a difficult person. But I hope you can provide some moderation for his more unusual quirks.'  
  
'Right.'  
  
A Time Lord and a Vampire living together. Two enemies from the dawn of Time. John was still looking at the little package which was rather anachronistic where the sky was blue and John was looking for rent. It could have belonged to another place, another time. 'Right.' He repeated again, trying to remember what he had forgotten to ask.  
  
'Mycroft?'  
  
But the Time Lord and his bird were long gone.  
  
All that was left was a single black feather.

  
-

  
_The Second War in Heaven was fought across a front spanning a thousand worlds and a million time zones. It was perhaps the single greatest war waged across the known cosmos._  
  
 _Perhaps the greatest victims  were the unknown number of aliens snatched from their native time zone and spirited into the conflict as part of the House Military. At the peak of conscription, not even children were spared. To cement their loyalty to the Great Houses, the military would then rewrite the history of their soldiers so that they were always Gallifreyans. Yet even with these supposedly enormous lifespans, in the stress filled conflict on the Front, soldiers rarely lived past a decade._  
  
 _There is evidence supporting the hypothesis that the Time Lords were desperate. The creation of Nine Gallifreys, nine Cloneworlds identical to the original, each a nano-second out of sync with the rest of the Universe was unprecedented. The Time Lords even resorted to stealing weapons from their own past and future in order to find a technological advantage against the Enemy._  
  
 _It is unknown whether Gallifrey, or indeed, a Gallifrey survived. Perhaps the Time Lords succeeded in their pursuit of the mythical Klein's bottle, a small and ordinary object capable of sealing away an entire universe. Or perhaps, in the more likely scenario, its original population had been decimated and its entire existence eradicated from the continuum._  
  
\- An Extract from 'The Speculative Origins of Gallifrey' (Marnal Gate). Retrieved from KS-159, 2600.  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Just some speculation touching very lightly on the Gallifrey Audios, Faction Paradox and Sherlock alternately.


End file.
